I almost got bit last night.
I was working with two dogs in the home with the dog’s owner.
I was bending over, helping one of the dogs into a down position. The other dog came right up to my face, barked and snapped missing my right cheek by centimeters.
I stood up, looked at the owner and said: “We need to take care of that.”
The owner apologized and said that she was scared that I was going to get bit.
I asked her to relax and informed her that I was a highly skilled, competent dog trainer with cat like reflexes and she had nothing to worry about.
Internally I was trying to calm down. I don’t care who you are, when you avoid getting bit purely by luck you are a little shaken up – and I was.
But I couldn’t show that to the client.
I am The Amazing Dog Training Man after all.
Onward.
I informed the owner that we were going to end this dog’s little aggressive attitude towards strangers and it was going to be accomplished by using the right technique to stop this behavior.
We were not going to use redirection, or ignoring or waiting for the right behavior to happen so we can reward it.
We were going to use a negative consequence to STOP the behavior when it happened. Once we had the acceptable behavior we were then going to reward.
I got the dog to react aggressively towards me, I firmly said, “NO,” and applied a negative consequence.
I repeated this two more times.
Nothing I could do after that would prompt any aggressive behavior towards me which meant I loaded on the praise and rewards.
Does this mean the dog is 100% cured? Maybe, maybe not, but the owner knows what to do and how to handle her dog if he acts like that again.
I have three more visits with this dog and I am confident that the dog will become a well behaved, stable member of the family.
If you’d like to see videos of how I teach “NO,” hop on over to the Dog Training Inner Circle.
You can get in for just $1.00 by going here NEXT:
Check out the video “Teach Your Dog “NO” to see how it’s done.
Best,
Eric